


Advent: Evening

by FyrMaiden



Series: Klaine Advent 2014 [5]
Category: Glee
Genre: Drag Queens, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 14:44:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2776922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Klaine Advent Prompt: Evening</p>
<p>(Drag Race AU!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent: Evening

Blaine leans his elbows on the counter, squints his eyes and turns his face side to side, examining his foundation line. He screws his nose up, huffs a heavy puff of air, and leans back in his chair. “I hate this make up,” he sighs, poking the pots in front of him. “None of it looks right. I look like a sad clown hooker.”

“Aww, baby,” says the queen sitting next to him, only barely meeting his gaze in the mirror, brush paused halfway to her face to make an appropriately sad moue with her mouth. “Does somebody have their period?” Blaine glares at her, and she smiles back at him, blows him a kiss. Blaine leans back into the mirror, examines himself again beneath the lights. 

“You’ve got too much yellow, dummy,” his neighbour says to him eventually, “It’s making you look like you have jaundice. Tone it down.” She hands him a box of wipes. “You’ve got an hour. I’d start again.”

Blaine nods, and takes the offered wipes. It’s a push, but he hasn’t got a choice. He can’t hit the runway in a $1000 gown with a face that would make Gaga blush.

*

Blaine had felt it their first day in the work room together. She’d walked through the door, her face flawless, her stare ice cold, and her legs going all the way up to her armpits in a knee length bodycon dress. She’d been perfect then and she’s better now that he knows her better.

The boy behind the eyelashes is equally lovely, albeit closed off and often defensive and angry. Or defensively angry. He’s also funny. He has a sharp eye for detail, he sews and he improvises, and he hasn’t bitched about one challenge. Blaine thinks he might be in love. Or in lust at the very least. He talks to him whenever he can, between the challenges, over lunch, propping up the bar in the evenings. He wonders if he’s clingy, or obvious, and decides he doesn’t care.

The man beneath the wig says he’s a stage school brat, that he’s worked for Vogue (“Well, the dot com,” he says, “When Isabelle Wright was there.” Blaine had literally put his chin on his hands at that, and asked him to tell him more about that, what she was like. Blaine remembers her well, and remembers equally her sad disappearance from runway fashion after just one season. Kurt - that’s his name, Kurt Hummel - says she was, for a time, his guardian angel. “She introduced me to all of this, really,” he says. “We had a party at my loft, she brought her friends. I ended up in heels for the first time since I was 16, and a boy did my make up. I was entranced.” Blaine nods and smiles, and wonders if things would have been different if they’d met a little sooner.) and he’s worked as a singing waiter (“Awful,” Kurt says. “Selling overpriced diner food to Broadway tourists. Not exactly what I paid tuition to do.”). These days, he works behind the scenes on Broadway, has done a few off off Broadway shows (“No one came,” he says, and laughs at himself. “Jesus, I wouldn’t have gone either if there hadn’t been a paycheck. But I guess you just never know who’s in the audience, right? My band booked a gig once at a one man audience. Right place right time.”), and cuts the rug when he can get a booking as a club host and Drag Entertainer Extraordinaire. The band was a Madonna covers band, five of them in total - two of his high school girl friends (he’d emphasised the space, Girl. Friends.), a guy they auditioned who called himself ‘Starchild’, and a girl called Dani who worked at the diner with him and had been in from the off. Blaine felt ‘Starchild’ should have big jazz hands and a lot of eyeliner. Kurt said one of those things was definitely true. He is 25 years old, and, he says, his crowning achievement is the one time he played Peter in a retirement home production of Peter Pan, when their Peter died in the run throughs. “Literally,” he says. “She crashed through the window on a harness and sort of just hung there in mid air.” He laughs a little, and Blaine smiles at him.

“What about you, Miss Beehive?” he says eventually. There are less of them now, top five. Although a seasoned pageant girl, Blaine never expected to get this far. He doesn’t sew and he’s running short on shoes. What he does have, however, is a lot of frequent flyer miles racked up from the travelling he’s done. He’s competed internationally, just for the thrill, to see his name out there, has qualified for Miss Gay America for the last three years, and damnit, he’s actually really proud of that. He’s worked damn hard for this, and finally it is paying him back. Kurt pauses with his piles of fabric, takes his earbud out, and cocks his head at the corset strapped to Blaine’s mannequin.

“Seriously. Tell me the story of you,” he says, and piles his things on the end of Blaine’s workbench.

Blaine pauses, and starts. Small town kid, born in Ohio (“Get out! Me too!”). Mom is Filipina (“Ooh, that explains the hair.”), brother is significantly older and an actor (“He was in those Free Credit Rating ads,” Blaine says, and it’s Kurt’s turn to rest his chin on his hands and explain he had such a crush on that guy when he was in high school. Blaine rolls his eyes. Kurt, and half of Ohio.), and his dad is - well, he’s not unsupportive, but he’s very confused by a son who impersonates women for a living but doesn’t want to be one. Kurt nods and says his old man is a mechanic, and for a while there, it was a source of tension. Blaine picks through bolts of fabric and dollar store accessories and sighs. “I was bullied pretty significantly,” he says, eventually. “Y’know. Hospital and change of schools kind of bullied.” Kurt looks genuinely sad, and Blaine shakes his head. “No,” he says, “It’s fine. I went to an all boys private school in Columbus. I mean, hormonal teenage boy, school full of preppy boys in blazers. It was fabulous. And I was allowed to be out there without comeback.” He met his first boyfriend there, Sebastian, stupidly rich and ultimately sort of stupid, but they’d been happy for a couple of years before they graduated and headed for different coasts. Blaine had discovered drag when he’d seen ‘Pageant’ one weekend with one of his fellow acapella choir buddies, Trent. It had been a long road, but he’d believed he could do it, started small and local, and worked his way up to the bigger pageants. (“What’s the highest you’ve placed?” Kurt asks, genuinely interested and non-judgemental. “I’ve won several,” Blaine says, scratching his neck, “But third runner up at Miss Gay America?” Kurt makes an impressed face and pushes himself upright, resumes picking through his fabric. “Okay,” he says, “So now I’ll have to step it up.”) His mom has travelled with him, and he is - and this he stresses - is currently very, very single. He doesn’t miss the smile that flickers on Kurt’s mouth before he turns away to rifle through his wigs.

*

The reunion show. They’re decked in their best evening wear. They’re to rock the runway in their best evening eleganza. Blaine has been waiting for this. He has the dresses, and the shoes, and finally, finally, he doesn’t have to put something together with basic stitching, hope, and hot glue. He has the perfect dress, and the perfect lipstick, and the perfect shoes, and he’s excited.

Across the room, he sees Kurt pour himself into glittering silver, until he’s six feet of shimmering waterfall. Kurt meets his gaze, and Blaine offers him a thumbs up. Once he is padded and his face is on, he’ll look like the hundred thousand dollars he’s almost certainly worth. For almost a whole second, Blaine considers changing his outfit.

Except he’s worth that money as well, and he’s going to prove it.

Neither of them wins. Or at least, neither of them wins the money. The money goes to a girl Kurt dismissively calls a ‘Vegas showgirl’. (“Did you see her blending? I was offended standing next to her.” and Blaine touches his elbow, “You can admit you’re disappointed, it’s okay.” Kurt glares and Blaine had drops his hand. “Okay,” Kurt concedes, “But that money was mine. She’s good. I’m better.”)

But, when the lights go down and the cameras stop, when it’s just them, in their jeans and shirts, heading back out to the hotel for the last night, when they’re done sharing and reliving those three months, when it is all over…

Blaine wouldn’t say he’s in love, but he’d definitely admit to being slightly infatuated. He feels like he’s been looking for Kurt his entire life, and he’s found him here, covered in sequins and striding out in six inch heels with half a sofa beneath his dress. When it’s just the two of them and a bottle of vodka, he catches hold of Kurt’s hand in his own and says, earnest and honest as ever, “I feel like our hands were meant to hold one another.” Kurt frowns at him, but Blaine is utterly without guile. “Fearlessly and forever.”


End file.
